Irish Portraits 14 Short Stories

Born in 1896, Liam O'Flaherty is regarded as one of the most gifted writers Ireland has ever produced. His name is as much associated with recklessness and bravado as with literary achievement: he was handsome and daring, and by the time he was thirty his reputation was enviable. O'Flaherty's buccaneering spirit made him decide to join the Irish Guards: after being invalided out of the British Army in 1917 he travelled to various parts of the world taking all kinds of menial jobs, and it was not until he had been exiled from Ireland in 1922 for a wild escapade in 'the Troubles' that he began to write. He has the Irish gift for humour and vividness; for the basis of his stories he chooses simple situations which he evokes with insight and real charm.

Liam O'Flaherty aka Liam Ó Flaithearta (1896-1984) was a significant Irish novelist and short story writer and a major figure in the Irish literary renaissance. O'Flaherty was the son of Maidhc Ó Flaithearta and Maggie Ganley of Gort na gCapall. In 1908, at the age of twelve, he went to Rockwell College. This was followed by enrollments at Holy Cross and University College, Dublin. He did not attend the first two schools for long. He had intended joining the priesthood, but in 1917 he left school and joined the Irish Guards under the name 'Bill Ganly'. He served on the Western Front, where he was injured, and it is possible that the shell shock he suffered may have been responsible for the mental illness which became apparent in 1933.

After the war O'Flaherty left Ireland and moved to the United States, where he lived in Hollywood for a short time. The well-known director John Ford, a cousin, later turned Ó Flaithearta's novel, The Informer, into a film. Many of his works have the common theme of nature and Ireland. He was a distinguished short story writer, and some his best work in that genre was in Irish. In 1923, O'Flaherty published his first novel, Thy Neighbour's Wife, thought to be one of his best. In 1935, his novel The Informer (for which he had been awarded the 1925 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction) was made into a film by John Ford. Over the next couple of years he published other novels and short stories. In 1933 he suffered from the first of two mental breakdowns.

He travelled in the United States and Europe, and the letters he wrote while travelling have now been published. He had a love of French and Russian culture, and this may have been part of the attraction he felt towards communism. Before his death, however, he left the Communist Party and returned to the Roman Catholic faith.